The second event in the 2021 Sydney Asian Art Series, which took place on 8 April 2021.
“Enable me to be great full for Your favour”, still image from “Ramadan Nights” (2021) by Samak Kosem (with assistance by Jeff Moynihan).
Curator and scholar Patrick Flores moderates a conversation with two contemporary Thai artists: Phaptawan Suwannakudt and Samak Kosem.
The artists discuss works to be included in an exhibition curated by Flores entitled "Leave it and Break no Hearts", which will address the beliefs of Thailand's Buddhism and Muslim minorities towards sexuality, religion, and ethnicity.
Co-presented by the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre, The Power Institute, and VisAsia, with support from the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
People
Patrick Flores
Patrick Flores is Professor of Art Studies at the Department of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines, which he chaired from 1997 to 2003, and Curator of the Vargas Museum in Manila. He is the Director of the Philippine Contemporary Art Network. Among his publications are Painting History: Revisions in Philippine Colonial Art (1999); Remarkable Collection: Art, History, and the National Museum (2006); and Past Peripheral: Curation in Southeast Asia (2008). He was the Artistic Director of Singapore Biennale 2019 and is the Curator of the Taiwan Pavilion for Venice Biennale in 2022.
Phaptawan Suwannakudt
Phaptawan Suwannakudt (born in Thailand, 1959), trained as a mural painter with her late father Paiboon Suwannakudt and led a team of painters that worked in Buddhist temples throughout Thailand during the 1980s-1990s. She was also involved in the women artists group exhibition Tradisexion in 1995 and in Womanifesto. She relocated to Australia in 1996 and completed MVA degree at Sydney College of the Arts, The Sydney University. She has exhibited extensively in Australia, Thailand and internationally including Traces of Words: Art and Calligraphy from Asia, Museum of Anthropology, UBC, Vancouver, Canada (2017) Retold-Untold Stories, Chiang Mai (2014) and Sydney (2016), Thresholds: Contemporary Thai Art, New York (2013) and the18th Biennale of Sydney: All Our Relations (2012). she is selected to participate in Beyond Bliss the Inaugural Bangkok Art Biennale, Thailand (2018-9) Most recently her work is included in Asia TOPA 2020, Art Centre Melbourne and The National 2021, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Her works are in public collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Bank Sydney, the National Art Gallery of Thailand and the National Gallery Singapore. www.phaptawansuwannakudt.com
Samak Kosem
Samak Kosem (b 1984) lives and works in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He works in the field of anthropology and is researching in Northern Thailand on transnational sexuality and the remaking of borders-bodies as part of his on-going PhD project at Chiang Mai University. Since 2017, he has merged social sciences and art practice to shape knowledge on queer studies and nonhuman subjects as portrayed through visual ethnography and assemblage art. His project focus on ‘queer Muslim’ in the Deep South border together with socio-cultural context of sheep and sea waves, later this project was part of the first edition of Bangkok Art Biennale in 2018. His art works on queer, nonhuman and migration have been presented internationally in galleries and museums.
